Little Lord: SKINNAMARINK / The Peanut Butter Show

Part recess, part ritual, part recruitment, SKINNAMARINK is Little Lord’s absurd and vicious take on education and indoctrination in America. SKINNAMARINK is based on “McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers,” a series of American schoolbooks used to teach children how to read from the 1830s to today (yes, to today). Pre-dating the pastel-colored/everybody-happy world of “Dick and Jane,” these brutal little books helped shaped the minds and behaviors of Americans for generations.

The simple, rich language of these primers and their blatantly moralistic underpinnings launched us to question our current mess of American belief-systems: How were you taught to read? To think? To behave? How were you punished? What is your relationship to authority? To discipline? To shame?

Transforming New York Theatre Workshop’s 4th Street Theatre into our own little one-room schoolhouse of horrors, SKINNAMARINK questions what kind of people are the most useful in society…and how we handle the rest.